content advisor, recognized journalist, bodacious writer-for-hire

Tagged christmas

Though I dabbled with Atari in my nascent years, I was raised on Nintendo. I have so many fond memories of the console because I spent so much of my childhood with it. Don’t get me wrong: I think gaming today is just as good (if not better) than it was back then. But one generally enjoys reminiscing about the past. I am no different.

Allow me to indulge.

The year was 1988. Christmas was quickly approaching. My brother and I had heard really good things about this game called Tecmo Bowl, so we asked our mom to buy it for us. About a month before Christmas we spotted the first gift under the tree that was the size and shape of a game cartridge box. Being the busy woman that my mother was at the time, plus the fact that she had to track presents for six total children, my brother and I couldn’t help ourselves. So we prematurely unwrapped the present after school one afternoon without her noticing.

Sure enough, it was the much-anticipated and sought-after Tecmo Bowl, starring the untackle-able and greatest athlete of all-time, Bo Jackson. Of course, we started playing immediately. Once the first play session was over, we re-wrapped the gift and slide it back under the tree at night. Next day, rinse and repeat. Pretty soon we started inviting friends over to play as we were the first ones on the block to get the game. By the end we were so brazen, we didn’t even care when my mother approached our room, opened the door to see a group of boys playing “some video game,” and just assumed it was a title we already owned.

On Christmas day, my none-the-wiser mother handed me and my brother a tattered, repeatedly-tapped, re-wrapped present, and with a sweet smile asked which of us wanted to open it. It was no use. We had all grown tired of the game after playing it daily for a month straight. I hope our feigned faces still had enough smile on them to show our appreciation for the great gift it was and will forever be.

Thanks, Mom!

This story first published Dec. 12, 2005 on Infendo, a video game blog I founded and later sold.

100 Christmas Classics. That it’s only $5 on Amazon is the icing on the cake. Seriously, if you’re too much of a Grinch to enjoy this refreshing and nostalgic take on Christmas, you have no soul. Bah, humbug.

If there ever was a first day of “Consumermas,” which is the celebration of consumption masked as giving, it would be Black Friday. Here’s how my family and I celebrated this year, as we have every year since marriage. Continue reading…

I grew up on White Christmas and it’s awesome. Arguably the best Christmas album of all time.

But after 25 years of listening memories, I think I’m finally ready to say that Frank Sinatra has the better Christmas voice. His renditions of White Christmas, I’ll be Home for Christmas, and Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas are the best I’ve ever heard. Even better than Bing.

I’ve uploaded a handful of recent images to Flickr after Lindsey and I erected our Christmas tree on Tuesday. Peep ’em, if you dare. Oh, and expect a steady influx of photo blogging in the coming days — the newness of this camera has yet to wear off.